


lit the sun, lit the black on fire

by citadelofswords



Category: The Room Where It Happened (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, M/M, heed the warnings, so don't read this if you haven't reached mid arc 2, this is basically just firebird sweet but pacific rim
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-29 01:40:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20788472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/citadelofswords/pseuds/citadelofswords
Summary: eight snapshots from the three months that wyatt vancroft and tseer darkfeather spent on the plane known only as the breach, after the gateway that allowed the monsters through to our world





	lit the sun, lit the black on fire

**Author's Note:**

> BIG BOLD WARNING FOR THIS FIC: **DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU HAVE NOT LISTENED THROUGH ARC TWO OF THE PODCAST.** this fic contains spoilers for firebird sweet and the vaguest mention of shit stanton does. 
> 
> go to the endnotes for more warnings please! they're sort of spoilery but it's important!
> 
> title from solstice by starset. faultline fits the vibe of this fic better, but i couldn't find a good lyric from the song for this fic.

**i. an introduction**

Falling, to Tseer, is a lot like flying, just with less control. Sometimes that’s a good thing. Sometimes Tseer needs to just — drop. To exist in freefall, clearing mind and body except instinct of when to start moving his wings again.

This falling, into the Breach, with Tessa screaming in comms and in his head until suddenly she isn’t anymore— well. This isn’t a good kind of falling.

Worse, Awakening has no wings, and her systems are failing with her navigation pilot abruptly ripped from the Drift as they cross planes. Tseer closes his eyes and tries to center himself the way he always centers Tessa, but with his brain half-empty— and with _ Wyatt _ filling his chest and lungs with his own burning panic— Tseer can’t breathe.

“Tseer!” Wyatt’s voice— aloud, not in the Drift, over Awakening’s warning sirens— snaps Tseer from his thoughts. “Can you grab me that cable over there? If I can reconnect it, I can get our propulsions back, and we might be able to jet out of here before we fall too far.”

Tseer nods. Wyatt’s hanging half in the rig, and there’s phantom pain shooting up and down Tseer’s legs, but he reaches as far as he can to try and grab the cable, to no avail. “Unhook me,” he says. “Just for a second, just one cable maybe, so I can reach the cable.”

“It’ll break the Drift,” Wyatt says, uncertain, and Tseer growls.

“The Drift is already breaking, Wyatt, Awakening is failing and once she loses power that’s it for us! Do you want us to make it out of here or not?!”

Wyatt gives him a long, hard look, and then sighs and nods. Tseer knows instantly when the connection has been broken because they do leave the Drift— and, well, they both scream. Tseer falls to his knees, clutching his head, trying to rip his helmet off and release the pressure, but every fiber of his being feels like it’s burning from the inside out, worse even than his memory of Wyatt’s fire—,

The pain ebs. Wyatt is cursing, long and low in Elvish, and there’s a sound like he’s trying to move and can’t. Wyatt’s mind drifts back against Tseer’s, as they reconnect to the Drift, and he can feel guilt and fear and pain in equal measure.

Gods, but Tseer has never been happier to be in the Drift.

“Okay,” he says, shaky. “Never mind.”

He slowly climbs back to his feet and collapses back against his rig, eyes shut and breathing heavily. “What the fuck just happened?”

“I think it’s this Dimension,” Wyatt says, and his voice is also shaking. “We’re too small to exist here without the… without sharing the mental load. Just like when controlling a Jaeger.”

“So, what, we’re stuck like this?” Tseer asks, flat.

“I guess so.”

That’s when the first Kaiju hits them, and everything goes to hell. 

* * *

**ii. a little embarrassment **

It takes days, maybe, for everything to calm down after that first Kaiju hits them. They don’t seem to care that there’s a Jaeger on their side of the Breach, but Wyatt and Tseer both know that a dead Kaiju on this side is one less that can attack their friends— however, different planar physics means that they’re harder to fight, harder to beat, and they’re also still falling.

Also, Awakening is still breaking down from their original fight, the one that knocked them back into the Breach in the first place. And with the two of them unable to leave the Drift, and Wyatt really in no fucking shape to be doing repairs anyway with their stock of healing potions on the other side of the cockpit, she’s still breaking.

There's a throbbing pain somewhere in Tseer's side, and he'd just chalk it up to one of his various ghost-injuries of Wyatt's if not for the fact that he's starting to feel a little woozy. "Uh," he says, and when he looks down there's a piece of jagged metal from the interior of Awakening's cockpit, sticking out of his side. "Oh."

Wyatt looks over. "Tseer!" He steps from the cockpit, twisting the cabling as much as he can to reach Tseer in his rig. "Okay. Okay. How did you not notice this?!"

"How didn't you?" Tseer shoots back, and squawks as Wyatt reaches to touch the metal. "What the fuck are you doing?"

"I don't have any healing magic, Tseer—,"

"Yeah, fat lot of use you are—,"

"But I'm not gonna let you bleed out," and Wyatt's eyes are flaming with determination. "Nor am I gonna let you stand around in pain. So, this will hurt, but I'm gonna cauterize the wound—,"

"No!" Tseer shouts, and an unfamiliar emotion rips through him— fear, for Wyatt in specific. "Wyatt, you can't— you'll feel it too, through the Drift, just like I can feel all yours!"

"You think I don't feel this?" Wyatt snaps. Tseer snaps his beak shut. "I'm literally made of fire, Tseer, it doesn't burn me. It doesn't hurt me. I'm not going to let you die if I can help it, and this is all I can do. So let me do this."

“Wyatt,” Tseer says, but another wave of pain and ghost pain hits him before he can finish, and Wyatt growls, ignites his hand, and glares at him until he closes his eyes. “Fine. Make it fast.”

“Sorry I don’t have painkillers, but this is gonna hurt bad,” Wyatt says, and Tseer barely has a moment to register that his own talons are burning before Wyatt yanks the shrapnel out of his side, and he blacks out.

When he finally comes to it’s to a _ long _ string of curse words in Elvish— at least, he thinks they’re cursing, Wyatt’s speaking with far too much vitriol for it to be anything else. There’s also an earsplitting headache and chest pain like he’s burning from the inside out and he screams, something primal and horrible.

“Tseer, Tseer,” Wyatt gasps, but he can’t bridge the gap between the two of them; there’s too many wires and connectors hooking their drivesuits to their rigs to the Drift, and he can only watch as Tseer twists in pain.

“Come on,” Wyatt snarls, and jerks one arm back, to match Tseer’s movement. The resulting motion jerks Awakening’s entire body around and into something else. If he can just hit Awakening in the right place, it should dislodge their stock of healing potions and launch one near enough to him that he can heal Tseer up.

Should.

He’s gonna have to get on figuring out how to do automatic healing potion deployment for when neither of the pilots can use healing magic.

Awakening jerks, and there’s a crash of breaking glass. Wyatt shouts in triumph and manages to catch one of the potions with his foot. “There we go,” he says, and grabs another for himself, for good measure. A lot of the pain is Tseer’s, but he knows he’s got his own injuries to be worried about.

They’re not Superior potions by any stretch of the imagination, but they’re enough. The fire in Tseer’s side dies down and he slowly goes completely limp. “Fuck,” he mutters, and gives himself several long moments before trying to look up. “Thanks,” he mutters. “For— for that.”

“Sure,” Wyatt says, and watches as Tseer tries to make his way up to his feet. “Yeah. I got you.”

Tseer looks out at the breach, at the madly swirling colors and bright lights and occasional passing kaiju, and squeezes his eyes shut. “Fuck,” he says again, for emphasis.

“You’re telling me,” Wyatt says.

* * *

**iii. finding common ground**

Wyatt's fallen asleep in fits and starts, only staying asleep until the pain of disconnect becomes so unbearable that it wakes him up again. Tseer just isn't sleeping, because it burns. It burns in the void left by Tessa's mind, where they're disconnected, and in the empty part of his chest that hasn't felt full since just before he and Tessa started drifting together.

He thinks he knows what Wyatt is dreaming about, anyway. He doesn't need to be sleeping in the Drift to see.

It's only when Wyatt starts twitching, twisting and whining softly in the rig, that it's confirmed, and by then Tseer can't _ do _ much. "Hey," he says. "Wyatt. Can you hear me?"

Wyatt's head snaps in his direction, but his eyes don't open.

"You're chasing the RABIT," Tseer says, and he can feel it in how their fall starts to accelerate, bringing them further down the Breach. He can feel the fire licking at his chest— not the burning of Wyatt's actual flame, though the Drift memories are close enough that he could confuse them. "You have to wake up, come on."

There's nothing. Wyatt's eyes screw tighter shut, and he whimpers, a vulnerable sound Tseer never thought he'd hear again.

"I know," Tseer says, and he tries to reach across the space between them to take Wyatt's hand, but can't reach. "I know it feels like what happened with— with Stanton was your fault. But it wasn't your fault. It absolutely was not your fault— you couldn't have known what he was planning. You couldn't have stopped him."

Wyatt turns a little more to face Tseer, barely imperceptible but for how his face moves inside his helmet.

"I'm sorry I blamed you," Tseer says. "For everything that Stanton did. I should have seen that he was too far gone for you to be able to convince him to not run his experiments. I still don’t think that you should have been protecting him the way you were—," Tseer thinks about Zero, how she doesn’t know who she is or where she came from but she can remember so clearly everything that went on in Stanton’s lab, and he snaps his beak shut to keep his anger insider for a moment while he tries to calm down.

“Tseer,” Wyatt rasps, and his eyes are open. Tseer freezes, solid, and withdraws his arm back into his own space. “Wh-what happened?”

“You were chasing the RABIT,” Tseer says. “You gotta recenter on where we are, what’s going on.”

Wyatt closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Tseer studies the lines of his face in the quiet moment, how his jaw tenses, the errant locks of hair falling from the topknot he’s been wearing for too long, and then Wyatt looks at him again, dark eyes meeting Tseer’s own, and he’s caught.

“Thanks, Tseer,” Wyatt says, and rolls out his wrists. “Did you— how much did you see?”

“Enough,” Tseer says, Wyatt cringes, imperceptibly. “How much of— what I said, did you hear?”

Wyatt thinks for a moment. “Enough,” he replies, and the feathers on the back of Tseer’s neck fluff up even though what he said was _ meant _ to be heard. “Thank you, Tseer.”

Tseer looks away. “Sure,” he mutters, and they don’t say anything else for some time— but it does get easier, after that.

* * *

**iv. hard at work**

It takes a long while. Tseer doesn’t know how long. But eventually, Wyatt’s healed up enough to justify making modifications to Awakening’s interior. Primarily to break the drivesuits free of their rig, so he can move around the cockpit and Tseer can spread his creaking and cramped wings a little bit. 

It’s experimental tech, unhooking the Drift from cables and monitors, for them to rely only on each other for moments at a time, to keep the Drift active and to keep them from chasing the RABIT, but Wyatt was working on it with Orron for months if his constant narration of what he’s doing is any indicator.

“It can never be for long periods,” he says, as he shades his eyes against the soldering gun. “Not even elves or changelings are built for that kind of mental strain, of having two minds in your head long term without a computer to handle some of the load. But, as an emergency system, just for a break, it’s a good thing to have. Can you hand me that screwdriver?”

Tseer reaches for it, and can’t quite reach. “Hipcheck,” he says— or maybe it doesn’t make it out of his mouth, but they both shift Awakening slightly and the screwdriver slides neatly into Wyatt’s hand.

“Thanks,” Wyatt says, and switches the soldering iron off. “The one benefit of our pain responses being entangled is that we’ll know immediately when something is going wrong when we try to disconnect.”

“So, we’re just gonna trial and error this?”

Wyatt grimaces. “I’m hoping for not _ too _ many trials, to be fair,” he says, “but yes.”

“All right,” Tseer sighs. He really doesn’t want to deal with this… but he really, really needs to stretch his wings. “Trial one?”

“Mark,” Wyatt says, and disconnects them.

(It’s another fifty trials, and ten bloody noses, before they manage to make it so they can disconnect for two minutes straight without falling out of the Drift. It’s glorious.

“Now we’re gonna work on getting back, right?” Tseer asks, wings spread, still seeing Wyatt’s memories press in against his memories pressing in against Tessa’s memories.

Wyatt grins at him. “Actually—,” he says, and bursts into a full-body cackle when Tseer tries to whip one of his wings into his face.)

* * *

**v. close, quiet, and alone**

“Do you think we’re gonna make it out of here?”

The question comes unexpectedly, after hours (or maybe days) of silence, from Wyatt, voice cracked with disuse. Tseer wishes he could see Wyatt’s face as he asks, but that would require letting the light from this plane back into Awakening, and he’s not quite ready for that amount of sensation yet.

“Are you asking me now because you know I can’t see you?” Tseer asks, quietly.

There’s silence, which is all the answer he needs.

“Do you want me to tell you what I really think about what you just asked me?”

Wyatt laughs a little. “I know, Tseer,” he says, because he does, the bastard. Tseer leans back in his rig and tips his head a little to work out the stiffness in his neck. “I know exactly what you’re thinking. You don’t need to tell me.”

“So why are you asking me such a stupid question?”

Wyatt sighs, and Tseer can hear him shifting uncomfortably. “You know why,” he says, and Tseer does. He can feel Wyatt’s fear, mixed in with his own. It burns hot, especially in moments like this. “I don’t really need to tell you either.”

Tseer nods, jerky. “Gonna say it anyway,” he says, gruff. “Wyatt, you’re smart enough and I’m stubborn enough to get through this. We’re gonna get back to them— to all of them.”

“Tseer,” Wyatt says, “you forget that beyond Orron, I don’t exactly have the connections that you do at the Shatterdome anymore. Not after—,”

“Not after Stanton. Yeah. I know.” Tseer spreads his wings a little, and starts in surprise when something brushes against them— a hand, free of a glove, skin on feathers.

“Sorry,” Wyatt says. “I didn’t— You—,”

“Nah, it’s fine,” Tseer says, and takes a deep breath. He winches his wing in a little bit and says, “It doesn’t matter, though, because you don’t exactly belong _ here _, either.”

Wyatt laughs dryly. “You’re not wrong about that,” he says. His hand doesn’t move, if the silence is any indicator.

“Tseer,” he says, finally. “I’m gonna get you home, I promise.”

“You’re going to get _ us _home,” Tseer tells him, firm. “Whatever you wanna do after that— leave the Dome for somewhere else, stay, disappear off the face of Luume, that’s your own choice. But if you’re going to make sure I get back, no way you’re not coming with me.”

He didn’t mean to say the last bit, but he can hear Wyatt’s surprise both in and out of the Drift, a punched out little breath like he wasn’t expecting that. “Oh,” he says. Tsser’s feathers fluff up in embarrassment. There’s a feeling of warmth in his chest, and he’s not entirely sure if it’s his or Wyatt’s, but he’s pretty sure it doesn’t matter, because he’s pretty sure it’s not going anywhere.

* * *

**vi. a disagreement becomes heated**

Tseer doesn't even remember how the argument started, just that it did. Just that it got heated, as arguments with Wyatt were wont to do (he'd walked in on many of the ones Wyatt had had with Orron, in the labs, to know that often literal fire got involved) but he isn't — this is one of the worst ones they've had since falling into the Breach.

They're tired. Tseer knows that that's what makes up about eighty percent of the argument. In their dreams they chase the RABIT so they barely sleep; there is little to eat; they can't even break the Drift without excruciating pain. And time isn't moving correctly without a day-night cycle. It’s been a month? Or three? Neither of them know.

So yeah. They're losing it a little. But Wyatt hasn't quit being such a fucking asshole about everything, even with an improperly treated concussion and poorly cauterized wounds clouding his judgement. And Tseer still hates him.

So they're arguing. And Tseer can feel Wyatt burning with anger through the Drift, and for the first time in weeks he can feel some of Tessa's constantly simmering rage bubbling up and mixing with his own, and in the muddle and confusion of three people's anger it takes Tseer a long moment to register the smoke.

"Wyatt," he says.

"Fucking what," Wyatt replies, and when he makes eye contact with Tseer his eyes are all flame. Tseer shudders, and the fire hits his chest full-force.

"Oh Gods," Wyatt says, though he doesn't cool off. His glove is smoking, flames burning through the tips of his fingers, and Tseer feels as though he's choking on flame.

"It's fine," he tries to say, but his throat is burning. Wyatt yanks on the cables, and the heat intensifies. "Fuck!"

"Tseer, stay with me," Wyatt snaps. "Shit, don't do this."

"Then cool off," Tseer snaps back, and smoke clouds his helmet and makes him cough. "I know you're still mad but you're setting me _ on fire _."

The fire settles in his chest, smouldering instead of burning, and he gasps in air. Wyatt leans back and away, eyes wide.

"I'm sorry," he says, and Tseer stares at him, unsure he's heard correctly. "I... can't be making this any easier. Between the Drift and the flames... this is why we don't —,"

"Whatever," Tseer mutters, feathers fluffing up. "Just... relax, okay, I'm not gonna try and kill you. At least not while your pain is inexplicably bound to my pain, or whatever." Wyatt sighs, the sound of him about to try and launch into a pseudo-scientific explanation, and Tseer says "I don't want to hear your magic-science mumbo jumbo right now!"

Wyatt laughs, a sound that surprises both of them, and finally the flame in Tseer's chest cools and settles. "You've changed, Tseer," he says. "Tessa's done you some good."

"Ugh," Tseer grumbles. "You haven't changed at all, asshole."

He closes his eyes, knowing that the connection— the _ phoenix _— he still feels in his heart is thrumming back to life again, and this time he's not gonna be able to shake it so easily.

* * *

**vii. a difficult choice**

They were almost there. They were so fucking close to making it out. Days and days and endless days of calculations and tests and Tseer bracing himself for the pain that they’ll inflict by insisting the nearly-broken Awakening work against whatever physics operates in this plane of existence, against Kaiju and hellfire and whatever else, and they were so close to the Breach when they got blindsided by a dying Kaiju and everything went to shit.

It all happened so fast he couldn’t keep track of it. Now all he knows is that Awakening is on fire. Tseer can feel it as acutely as he can feel how Wyatt is burning, in the rig beside him. But the fire in Awakening is growing stronger, while Wyatt's is growing weaker. Panic seizes him.

"Wyatt," he says, and his own voice cracks. "Wyatt, please, hold on. Hold on. We're almost there."

"There's an escape pod," Wyatt says, and his voice is so weak Tseer almost doesn't hear him. "In the shoulder. You should take it and go. Get out of here."

"What?" Tseer stares at Wyatt. The gap between them has never seemed wider. "No! I'm not going!"

"You have to," Wyatt insists. "You have— all of them to get back to. Your whole crew, and Tessa— you can't die here—," He bites off his last words, and Tseer knows how he was going to finish that sentence.

And he's not having it.

"No," he says again. "I'm not going anywhere. I can't go back without you."

He stretches across the gap, and the cables pull and threaten to snap, but he _ finally _ manages to catch a hold of Wyatt's hand, and Wyatt startles a little bit. It's the first touch Tseer has initiated since they fell into this mess, and Wyatt looks at the talons clutching his hand with confusion, and then back up at Tseer's face with a dawning look of— something that makes Tseer's feathers fluff up.

He's bad at feelings. And not great with words. But Tseer thinks he's managed to get his point across.

"Tseer," Wyatt says softly, and then the burning fades. His eyes close.

"No!" Tseer yells, and Awakening's acceleration starts to slow. "No, Wyatt, wake up! Wake _ up _!"

He uses the grip on Wyatt's hand to yank him closer, and something pulls and disconnects and there's the growing yawn in his chest but worse, worse is that he's beginning to cool. "Please! You have to wake up— I said I'm not going back without you!"

He gently takes Wyatt's helmeted face in his other talons and there's three layers of glass between them but he still tips their foreheads together. The glass clinks. Alarm bells are ringing. The yawn is growing wider.

"Did I ever tell you what my mother used to call me?" he asks, and Wyatt's eyelids flutter, where they're closed. Awakening stutters a little. Tseer barrels on. "You uh, can't laugh. You have to promise. I haven't even told Tessa this."

Wyatt's eyes blink open. "It's uh. M'i bye'u."

One eyebrow goes up, and a little spark comes back to his eyes. "Firebird?"

Oh. Oh shit. Tseer's feathers draw in. "I didn't know what it meant." he defends, and Wyatt smiles a little, eyes closing again.

"That's okay," he says, and Awakening begins to accelerate. "My elf parent had a name for me. Which they used to call me before they left. 'I'm burning and blackened my lungs, it feels good to have fire back on my tongue'."

His hand comes to rest on the side of Tseer's helmet, and that moment is when they break through the Breach, back into their own world.

**interlude**

Tseer almost cries when they break the surface of the ocean. The airlock pushes open and he yanks his helmet off, yanks Wyatt's helmet off, and tugs them both from the cockpit.

"Come on," he says. "Almost out."

He can hear choppers, and someone's words crackling over the comms. Broken up voices, but he can hear someone shouting and he yells.

"Is anyone there? Orron? Tessa? Please, someone answer!"

More crackling. Wyatt's hand grips his arm. It's weak, but he's there.

"Get us out of here!" He hoists Wyatt higher in his arms. "Wyatt's badly injured, we need a healer—,"

"TSEER!"

He nearly sobs in relief, as the Drift between him and Tessa thrums back to life. Wyatt's Drift shifts, fluttering like a bird, and he holds him closer. "They're coming," he says, and tips his forehead to rest against Wyatt's for real this time, no glass between them. "They're coming. Just hold on. They're almost here." 

* * *

**viii. parting ways, perhaps forever**

It’s nearly a week before Tseer can find a moment to talk to Wyatt alone. Every time he was in medical Corra or Orron (or sometimes both) were hovering and fluttering over him, which didn’t really allow for important conversations. And then Wyatt was out but in meetings somewhere, and Tseer was busy reconnecting with Tessa, and so it isn’t until late one night, unable to sleep, that Tseer goes for a wander and knows the phoenix in his chest will lead him right to Wyatt’s door.

It does.

He reaches out to knock and the door opens before he can even touch it. Wyatt is standing there, freshly shorn, only in a pair of sleep pants and his new stitches and scars from Drifting for so long, Tseer tries not to look too long.

“Hi,” Wyatt says. “You gonna come in?”

Tseer lowers his talons to tug his gi self-consciously. “How’d you know I was coming?”

Wyatt presses a hand to his chest, over his heart. “I knew,” he says. Oh.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Wyatt steps away from the door and Tseer follows him, automatically. His bed is a mess of some of his more lurid shirts and outfits, and Tseer takes stock of the empty duffel, haphazardly opened drawers, and narrows his eyes. Wyatt continues like nothing is amiss. “I would have thought you’d be with Tessa.”

“Yeah, me too,” Tseer says, and shifts uncomfortably. “Um, it seems like she and Ai figured something out. So. I don’t wanna disturb her.”

“That’s… good. About her and Ai.” Wyatt is silent for a moment, folding a shirt and refolding it. “You know, I always thought that you and her—,”

Tseer is so startled he actually jumps a little. “What?” he squawks, fluffing up. “No! I mean— well, not that— not really, not—,” Wyatt’s grinning at him, and Tseer grabs a pair of his salmon colored shorts and throws them at him, which only gets him laughing. “Don’t look at me like that!”

Wyatt’s caught his shorts, and manages to calm himself down. His smile doesn’t fade, though, and looks impossibly more fond. “Sorry,” he says. “I just missed you.”

Tseer freezes, and Wyatt blushes, faintly. “If, if that’s okay,” he amends.

Tseer nods, wishing the words would unstick from his throat, and remembers why he was going stiff earlier. “You uh, going somewhere?”

Wyatt looks at the shorts like he’s never seen them before, and then at the mess on his bed. “Ohh,” he says. “Uh, they’re talking about transferring us to another Dome. Me and Orron, both.”

Tseer’s blood goes cold in his heart. “Transferring?”

“It wouldn’t be a— we wouldn’t be dropping anymore,” Wyatt replies, kicking at something under his bed, not meeting Tseer’s eyes. “Purely research and development. Apparently Orron doesn’t work half as efficiently when I’m not there, and, and they don’t want to risk losing one or both of us on another drop like— like what happened.” Tseer’s entire body is screaming at him to step forward, wrap his wings around Wyatt and tell him to stay, stay here, with him, but he can’t move. “We’re supposed to ship out tomorrow to see if it would be a good fit.”

The phoenix nested in Tseer’s chest is crying. He can’t do this again.”Wyatt,” he says, intending to go further, but when Wyatt looks up he can’t say any more. He’s never looked so damn beautiful, even with the flames in his eyes dim, even when he’s still healing and too tired and too thin, but now that there’s not panic and the rig separating them Tseer can’t cross the space between them.

“Tseer?”

He has nothing. There’s nothing he can say to Wyatt that will make him stay. “I—,” he starts, and can’t finish.

“I thought you might want space.” Wyatt’s words are quiet, but he doesn’t look away from Tseer once.

“I don’t.”

“You wanted it before. After Stanton.”

“That was— Wyatt, what part of ‘I won’t come back without you’ implies I want space?”

Finally, finally Tseer can cross the divide, and he grabs Wyatt’s hands in his talons. Wyatt looks down in some surprise, and when he looks back up that tiny smile is on his face. “You used the word ‘can’t’ before.”

Tseer nods. He brings one of Wyatt’s hands to his chest, where his heart beats, where his phoenix is, and he says. “You left once. I can’t do that again. Don’t go.”

He doesn’t really think it’ll be enough, but Wyatt leans down and presses his lips to Tseer’s forehead, a long, lingering kiss, and then he rests his cheek there.

“Okay,” he says. “Do you wanna stay the night?”

Relief floods Tseer’s bones and he almost falls over. “Yes, please,” he says, and Wyatt turns and grabs the duffle, chucking it off the bed to the other side of the room.

“Good,” he says. “Cause I don’t really want you to go, either.”

**Author's Note:**

> warnings for this fic include: prolonged psychic connections, involuntary bonding through said psychic connections, shared pain and all the trauma that comes with that, the absolute incorrect way to treat major life-threatening wounds while on a battlefield, codependencies that come with being the only living creature that can speak for miles around, and lots and LOTS of fire.
> 
> okay here are some more notes about pacific rim au that i may or may not ever write in more minific:
> 
> \- tseer and wyatt were once co-pilots (oh my god they were co-pilots). stanton was experimenting? on other pilots to try and make single-pilot drifting more viable. very scientifically unethical. wyatt got caught in the crossfire of stanton being taken down for that, there was a lot of misinterpretation, and most of the scoobies turned their backs, including tseer, who started drifting with tessa instead.  
\- this fic happens in snapshots because 1. so much of what happened on the other side of the breach blurred together to the point that these are the key moments that tseer remembers, and 2. i wrote most of this fic on vacation in china, and trying to expand it any more than this seemed an impossible feat. i like it like this, though.  
\- most of the scoobies don't actually hate wyatt as much as they do in canon, they just believe he was more responsible for what was going on with stanton than he actually was.  
\- wyatt is going to stay at the dome. orron is going to leave, but vanish mysteriously partway to the other dome. he's going to retire comfortably and not let anyone drag him into crazy shenanigans.  
\- tseer is going to go back to piloting with tessa full time; this was one emergency drop because of awakening's unique systems that will never happen again because awakening's jaeger is wrecked beyond repair.  
\- the titles for the scenes are from star crossed by alex roberts, which is the game bryan and danielle play for firebird sweet!
> 
> if you wanna read the original few minifics for this 'verse you can find them on my dreamwidth [here](https://paradoxicalrenegade.dreamwidth.org/tag/pacific+rim+au). you can find me on twitter @citadelofswords or in the roomwhere discord server whenever.
> 
> someday i'll write tessa and ai sorting their shit out for real. someday.


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